Mercury/32 - Telegraphic Transfer Fees

For many customers, especially those in Europe, making payments to international
suppliers can be a difficult or frustrating experience. Banking
arrangements in the USA and South Pacific nations make payment
by cheque easy and inexpensive, but this does not appear to
be the case in many European countries.

Many of our European customers have told us that the easiest
way for them to pay us is by Telegraphic Transfer,
where their bank transfers the funds to us electronically using
transfer agents such as SWIFT or IBAN. Unfortunately, our experiences
with Telegraphic Transfers have been uniformly unsatisfactory,
sometimes verging on the grotesque.

The problem with Telegraphic Transfers mainly comes down
to
who pays the fees for the transfer. It appears that most European banks
assume by default that they should deduct their fees from
the amount remitted: if we were only talking about a Euro or
two, then that would be bearable, but many banks charge as much
as €20 to send a telegraphic transfer, an amount that we simply
cannot absorb.

What is worse is that not only does the originating bank
deduct their fee from the amount transferred, but any bank involved
in the transfer typically also deducts a fee. Most banks do
not hold accounts with every bank in the world, so it is quite
common for as many as three banks to be involved in the actual
transfer of funds - the customer's bank, an intermediary bank,
then my bank. On one infamous occasion, a customer in Germany
transferred the equivalent of US$135 to me by Telegraphic Transfer,
but the amount that arrived here after bank fees was only the
equivalent of US$68 - nearly half the remitted amount had been
eaten up in bank fees. I'm sure it's clear to everyone that
we simply cannot accept that kind of deduction from the invoiced
amount.

We want to support our European customers who prefer to pay
by Telegraphic Transfer, so we will still accept payment by
this method. But to simplify the process, we have to charge
a uniform fee of US$30 on any Telegraphic Transfer made to us:
we have chosen this amount because ten years' experience has
shown that it is approximately the average amount lost in transit
over all the TTs we receive. Provided you have paid the uniform
fee, our undertaking to you is that we guarantee we will accept
your payment no matter how much is deducted from it by banks
in transit.

We apologize for any inconvenience this requirement may cause,
but the issue is unfortunately well outside our control.